Nonfiction from Sumner & Stillman

1906. London: Methuen & Co., (1906). 40 pp ads dated August 1906. Original green cloth decorated in gilt. First Edition (consisting of 1,511 copies) of Conrad's first volume of nonfiction, a rambling discourse about life on the sea. Though originally planned as a collection of sketches, during preparation for publication Conrad converted it into a continuous book. As… Read more about this item

1921. Garden City NY & Toronto: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1921. Original navy-blue cloth decorated in gilt. First American Edition, first printing (which is to say, in the standard navy-blue cloth binding). This is a collection of many of the pieces that had been published in 25-copy private issues (by Clement Shorter and by T.J. Wise) during the… Read more about this item

1921. London & Toronto: J.M. Dent & Sons, 1921. Original olive-green cloth, with dust jacket. First Edition (preceded by a 35-copy privately-printed issue). This is a collection of pieces that had appeared, over the prior two years, as 25-copy pamphlets produced by Clement Shorter and by T.J. Wise. This copy is in the third and usual state, with… Read more about this item

1912. New York and London: Harper & Brothers, 1912. Original dark blue cloth. First (American) Edition of Conrad's most purely autobiographical work. This American edition was published on January 19, 1912; the English edition, titled SOME REMINISCENCES, was published sometime in January, so precedence is therefore uncertain. Beginning in 1916, all English editions adopted the American title, which… Read more about this item

1906. New York and London: Harper & Brothers, 1906. Original blue cloth pictorially decorated in yellow, grey and brown. First (American) Edition, published on the same day as the London one. This was Conrad's first volume of autobiographical non-fiction. This copy is in Supino's binding state "A" (Cagle's binding "a") with the smaller (17x10mm) anchor-and-rope device on the… Read more about this item

1912. London: Eveleigh Nash, 1912. 2 pp undated ads. Original dark blue cloth. First Edition of this autobiographical work, which initially appeared serially in Ford Madox Ford's newly-founded English Review. What is remarkable about Conrad's reminiscences is how clearly he employed fictional techniques worked out with Ford,... wherein the narrative intensity increases as the story develops. To achieve… Read more about this item

1926. London & Toronto: J.M. Dent & Sons, 1926. Original green cloth, with dust jacket. First Edition of this posthumous collection of nineteen essays, most of which had previously appeared in limited pamphlet form. Not mentioned on the title page (but noted on the dust jacket) is the fact that for this book Richard Curle contributed an eleven-page… Read more about this item

1921. London & Toronto: J.M. Dent & Sons, 1921. Original olive-green cloth, with dust jacket. First Edition (preceded by a 35-copy privately-printed issue). This is a collection of pieces that had appeared, over the prior two years, as 25-copy pamphlets produced by Clement Shorter and by T.J. Wise. This copy is in the second state (with the "S"… Read more about this item

1921. [one of 35 (now 21) copies] London & Toronto: J.M. Dent & Sons, 1921. Original olive green cloth. First Edition, of which this is one of 35 (Wise says 33) privately-printed advance copies that "were sent to friends of the publisher." These pieces primarily come from the limited pamphlets that were privately printed for Thomas J. Wise… Read more about this item

1921. London & Toronto: J.M. Dent & Sons, 1921. Original blue cloth stamped in black. First Trade Edition, third and usual state (with pp xi-xii a cancel leaf), secondary (blue) binding. Supino notes that according to Dent records, 890 copies of the third state were bound as a colonial edition -- yet neither Cagle nor Supino ever saw… Read more about this item

1926. With an Introduction by Richard Curle. Garden City NY: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1926. Original dark blue cloth, with dust jacket. First American Edition of this posthumous collection of twenty essays, most of which had previously appeared in England in limited pamphlet form. In our experience the American edition of LAST ESSAYS is considerably scarcer than the… Read more about this item

1923. Edited and Compiled from their Diaries and Papers. [In Two Volumes.] London: Macmillan and Co., 1923. Original red cloth with Irish Guards star in gilt, with dust jackets. First Edition of this exhaustive narrative of the experience of the Irish Guards during the Great War. Kipling had good reason to focus such attention on the Irish Guards:… Read more about this item

1926. With an Introduction by Richard Curle. Garden City NY: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1926. Original dark blue cloth, with dust jacket. First American Edition of this posthumous collection of twenty essays, most of which had previously appeared in England in limited pamphlet form. In our experience the American edition of LAST ESSAYS is considerably scarcer than the… Read more about this item

1923. With Eight Pictures in Colour by Jan Juta. London: Martin Secker, (1923). Original brown cloth, with dust jacket. First English Edition, published two years after Thomas Seltzer's New York edition. "In her book LORENZO IN TAOS, Mabel Dodge Luhan says it was after reading SEA AND SARDINIA that she wrote Lawrence inviting him to come to New… Read more about this item

1919. New York: George H. Doran Company, n.d.[1919]. Original grey-green cloth, with dust jacket. First American Edition of this sequel of sorts to THE NEW REVELATION, on the subject of spiritualism -- Doyle's new focal point after losing his son Kingsley in 1918 and his brother Innes earlier in 1919; "one sees more clearly and broadly what our… Read more about this item

1914. With Preface by the Right Hon. F.E. Smith, K.C., M.P. London: Hodder and Stoughton, n.d. [September 1914]. Original self-wrappered 32-page booklet. First Edition. "This article, stating the British case [just weeks after the outbreak of war], was issued as a recruiting pamphlet in Great Britain, but was used abroad as a simple explanation which would enable neutrals… Read more about this item

1902. London: Smith, Elder, & Co., 1902. Original white wrappers. First Edition of Doyle's third piece of nonfiction, published two months before THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES. He wrote this piece, drawing considerably from his THE GREAT BOER WAR (of 1900), in an effort "to stem the extraordinary outbreak of defamation" against Britain; it was issued in substantial… Read more about this item

1907. [signed by Doyle] With Sixteen Illustrations. London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1907. 6 pp undated ads. Original red cloth with cover vignette in gilt. First Edition of this group of literary essays, written as wanderings about the library in the Doyle home (which is shown in the frontispiece photograph). "Through the Magic Door" gives you glimpses of… Read more about this item

1842. in Boston, February 1, 1842. Reported by Thomas Gill and William English. Most of the Speeches revised by their Authors. Boston: William Crosby and Company, 1842. Original printed wrappers. First Edition. This is the report (written up by two reporters from the Boston Morning Post) on the dinner given in honor of Dickens in Boston, during his… Read more about this item

1919. Being a Plain History of Life and Mankind. London: George Newnes, [Nov 1919 - Nov 1920]. Original color pictorial wrappers. First Appearance of this grandiose work, in the 24 fortnightly wrappered parts as originally issued. [Wells] and his friends on the League of Nations committee had discussed text­books and methods of education, as a way of preventing… Read more about this item